Samples returned from an asteroid contain a surprising abundance of the basic ingredients of life. They were discovered to be rich in carbon, nitrogen and ammonia, with over 30 kinds of amino acids and the five nucleobases found in RNA and DNA. 1 The asteroid, Bennu, was targeted by a Nasa mission that returned a capsule to Earth in September 2023.

Asteroid samples fetched by NASA hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world..

Molecules friendly to life have been found in samples of the asteroid Bennu, which NASA collected with a robotic probe five years ago.

The asteroid Bennu contains a lot of organic molecules, including many essential building blocks of life, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. It suggests that the chemistry that produced the asteroid may be occurring today on the ice moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Two new studies show a briny, carbon-rich environment on the parent body of the Bennu asteroid was suitable for assembling the building blocks of life.

Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that shed light on how life arose.

NASA’s Lucy mission will continue its journey to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun, in 2025. One key event for Lucy is its flyby of the inner main-belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, scheduled for April 20, 2025.

Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system

PT5, a near-Earth object discovered last year, has captivated scientists with its potential lunar origins. Likely ejected into space after a massive impact on the Moon thousands of years ago, the asteroid’s orbit closely matches Earth’s.

A NASA spacecraft has returned asteroid samples that hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world.

New insights from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission have unveiled intriguing clues about the potential origins of life on Earth. The mission, which launched in Septembe